Fragmentation —

Only 25% of Android users upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean

And over half are still using Gingerbread.

Adoption rates for Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean have been slow to rise, according to a distribution report made available today at the Android Developer Forum. Only 23.7 percent of Android users have upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich, with Jelly Bean trailing behind at a snail's pace at 1.8 percent.

The data was collected over a 14-day period from various Android devices accessing Google Play. Interestingly, more than half of Android users are still using some iteration of Gingerbread, which was released almost two years ago, and 12.9% of users are still on Froyo. Only 1.9 percent of users are utilizing Honeycomb, though that's not surprising considering the update was a tablet-only affair and tablets like the Motorola Xoom—one of the few devices to get the update—were not best sellers.

Android Code Names

Froyo: Android 2.2.xGingerbread:: Android 2.3.xHoneycomb: Android 3.0-3.2.xIce Cream Sandwich: Android 4.0.xJellybean: Android 4.1.xThe minuscule number of Jelly Bean users isn't too surprising, considering that not all carriers and phone manufacturers have made Android 4.1 available. For instance, Verizon only recently pushed Jelly Bean updates to its Galaxy Nexus users, and Taiwan-based HTC had put more priority on prepping Ice Cream Sandwich for its current handsets than sending Jelly Bean down the upgrade pipelines.

At least some Gingerbread users are slowly upgrading. Since the last adoption report, the number of Gingerbread users has fallen by 1.7 percent, though it's not clear which version of Android they upgraded to.

What these statistics really illustrate is that, although casual Android users aren't too concerned with having the latest software upgrade, developers and hardcore users may find themselves frustrated, if not alienated by the slow roll-out process. Indeed, fragmentation is still a big issue for third-party Android application developers.

Florence Ion
Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.

This isn't a problem. The update situation on android needs to be fix, but it is not a problem and has never been. People are still buying them.

edit: The author already said that its a problem for developers and I thought that was obvious. I should make it clear; its not a "android is doomed, android is terrible" problem that it people make it out to be. The causes of android fragmentation and update problems such as the variety of hardware and Oem customization are also some of the things that made it so popular. This is undeniable.

My Android phone tells me it's on version 2.2.2. I wonder wtf that corresponds to in these stupid cute names that Google uses.

No, don't bother to tell me. I don't actually care. I only note that when writing these types of articles, don't assume that everyone knows what the hell Ice Cream Sandwich, Gingerbread, or Pound Cake actually is.

It is a problem, because Google doesn't have the same power over Android phones that Apple has over iPhones. The carriers and phone manufacturers can just say no. No, we won't let you upgrade, you have to buy a new phone.

I think that the Android universe is starting to realize this and it will shift.

Gingerbread is a good OS. iOS 6 is just starting to catch up to it. But, these ICS and JB numbers will race forward as people begin upgrading their older Gingerbread phones to new phones over the next 8 to 10 months.

This isn't a problem. The update situation on android needs to be fix, but it is not a problem and has never been. People are still buying them.

It's not a problem if all you care about is marketshare of a nebulous platform.

It IS a problem if you are developer trying to target the latest whiz-bang feature in Android.

It IS a problem if you are an end-user who cares about having the latest whiz-bang feature in Android on a phone you bought 2 months ago.

It will be a problem when all those out-dated phones are discovered to have some insecurity that leads to the largest mobile-zombie bot-net ever created. Someone is going to get so many prank calls....

I know, easier said than done in many cases. I only managed to root my Legend (after a couple of failed attempts) a few months ago, and only even tried (again) because a developer came up with an Ice Cream Sandwich ROM for the phone. Otherwise, I'd still be on Froyo until my next phone, and I can't say upgrading phones is my top priority...

There are two types of Android users: power users, and people who don't know what "Android" is and just bought some random phone at the store. Power users use third party ROMs and all sorts of hacks to remove crapware, update firmware, and generally tune the phone the way people used to work on muscle cars. They're maybe 10% of the Android audience.

The other 90% simply doesn't know that there even is a 2.3 or a 4.0 and that there are all of these different versions. They just want to make phone calls, send text messages, and maybe use a web browser.

The bottom line is that there is no market pressure for Google or handset makers to put effort into testing and deploying newer OS versions on the 200? 300? 500? models of phones that are out in the wild. There's no revenue upside, the power users have already taken care of themselves, and you just run the risk of exploding someone's HTC Droid Amber X2 3G/SP Hypertech Mark IV HD when they don't even want the new features anyway, and would be confused by the OS changes.

Ah well its really annoying. In some areas Apple is so much better than Android. In other areas its completely opposite. Its really annoying that you cannot live in a perfect world where one platform has all the advantages. (Which would be pretty impossible since many of the respective advantages are results of design decisions that are pretty much orthogonal to each other.)

Apple: - much better update policy, keeps your devices living longer.- easier UI- single best hardware option in iPhone5 (seriously the only phone that looks as nice and polished is the Lumia920 but that is much bigger)- much better device syncing esp. on OSX. (People may bash iTunes but the alternative is ridiculous, Android file transfer urgs).

Android- better Services that do not lock you in that badly. (You can't easily move your iCloud account to Android but you can easily access your gmail, google contacts etc. from iOS if you wanted to switch. Choosing Android is the more open option. And Google is simply ahead in the game compared to Apple- more flexible UI and features (How long did it take Apple to add notifications?, Android seems more willing to experiment here)- much more diverse hardware options and faster update cycle.

So if you want a future-safe option go with iPhone (or Google Nexus devices) if you want the latest or greatest go with Android. Its a bit futile to argue which is better. It depends a bit on personal taste.

The problem is that Gingerbread>ICS (2.3>4.0) is a far, far bigger jump than Eclair to Gingerbread (2.0>2.3) or even Honeycomb to Jellybean (3.0>4.1). Honeycomb marked a major change not only in UI paradigm, but under the hood, particularly drivers. A lot of devices that were barely able to run GB (a lot of them, given the low-ball nature of a lot of handsets) will NOT run 4.x without hacking it to pieces.

My Android phone tells me it's on version 2.2.2. I wonder wtf that corresponds to in these stupid cute names that Google uses.

No, don't bother to tell me. I don't actually care. I only note that when writing these types of articles, don't assume that everyone knows what the hell Ice Cream Sandwich, Gingerbread, or Pound Cake actually is.

Gingerbread is a good OS. iOS 6 is just starting to catch up to it. But, these ICS and JB numbers will race forward as people begin upgrading their older Gingerbread phones to new phones over the next 8 to 10 months.

They'll update to 4.0 just in time for 5.0 to launch. Or 6. Or more likely they'll be forever stuck at 2.3 because the maker of their phone sees no reason to upgrade a bunch of garbage phones.

This isn't a problem. The update situation on android needs to be fix, but it is not a problem and has never been. People are still buying them.

It's not a problem if all you care about is marketshare of a nebulous platform.

It IS a problem if you are developer trying to target the latest whiz-bang feature in Android.

It IS a problem if you are an end-user who cares about having the latest whiz-bang feature in Android on a phone you bought 2 months ago.

It will be a problem when all those out-dated phones are discovered to have some insecurity that leads to the largest mobile-zombie bot-net ever created. Someone is going to get so many prank calls....

It's even a problem if you have a 1 year old phone and want some of the recent features of Android.

Gingerbread is a good OS. iOS 6 is just starting to catch up to it. But, these ICS and JB numbers will race forward as people begin upgrading their older Gingerbread phones to new phones over the next 8 to 10 months.

ICS is a great OS, Jellybean is even better. Gingerbread? Bleh. Better than earlier versions of Android, but still coated in a thick layer of engineer-stank. Matias Duarte has done wonders for that platform. It sucks that more people still haven't gotten to experience what a leap forward Android made with 4.x.

P.S. I overheard at the bar that everyone will be upgrading every phone to be network booting devices sometime around Q2 2013. All phones will 'poop' out the bootloader immediately upon upgrade in the flavor of the type of food the OS is named after.

I unlocked my boot-loader just so I could update my phone, 75% of users are not going to go to that extreme.

There's a significant portion of users who couldn't even if they were willing to. Last I checked, my phone (which is not incredibly uncommon) has no official third-party ROM builds available for ICS. It's all unofficial builds with missing features and such. So even being willing to root and flash, I'm still stuck on Gingerbread if I want a working phone.

Quote:

Only 1.9 percent of users are utilizing Honeycomb, though that's not surprising considering the update was a tablet-only affair and tablets like the Motorola Xoom—one of the few devices to get the update—were not best sellers.

Um, no? As I recall, a lot of tablets ran Honeycomb. But between having fewer models to update and the fact that HC was a bit of a kludge, vendors were pretty good about getting their tablets updated to ICS. I know my Transformer started on Honeycomb.

The title really does make it sound like this is because of user choice. The only choice the end-user has about the version of Android running on their device is the device they purchased. After that, they're at the mercy of their carrier and manufacturer.

There's no guarantee that any device sold without ICS will ever get ICS or newer - in fact, the easy odds are that they never will, because everyone responsible for making that happen has a very, very strong financial interest in not working on an upgrade. They want you to buy a new phone, don't want to pay for development time for a product that's not in R&D, and don't want to deal with support headaches for upgrades.

At least since the lion's share of users are still using ancient versions of the OS, most apps are going to be compatible that far back so as to maximize potential user base - so there is that as a positive, I guess. That's a positive, right? No forward progress as a feature - go figure.

The big questions are, how many of those 25% represent actual upgrades, vs. buying a device released with ICS preloaded? And as everyone else noted, how many of those 75% are actual "missed opportunity" rather than old hardware or carrier resistance?

Seems like lots of phones stop getting updates after a year or so; it's likely many users cannot upgrade to ICS or JB. I have a Droid Incredible I got about 2 years ago, the last update was to GB in Sept 2011.

I think there was a real bump in the hardware power needed to run ICS and JB compared to GB, lots of users were likely left out in that jump.

I've been an Android user since 2010 and recently upgraded my iPhone4S from work to the Galaxy S3 (VZW), which shipped with ICS (4.0.4). I was so disgusted with the green fonts and UI from TouchWiz and the overall lackluster perfprmance of ICS that I unlocked the bootloader and rooted the S3 for my very first time.

Now running Cyanogenmod 10 (Jelly Bean 4.1) and couldn't be happier. Why manufacturers and carriers have to slap all their bullshit on the stock Android experience, I'll never understand. The premium Android phones should all ship stock Android, latest release.

This has everything to do with manufacturers and carriers who insist upon adding/modding Android to include custom stuff like Sprint TV, etc.

I'd be happy to upgrade my Photon 4G to ICS if Motorola hadn't killed the upgrade. I was happy to upgrade my previous Android phones when the manufacturer and carrier finally issued the upgrade.

This article, along with the one about Motorola killing the ICS upgrade for some handsets, is not about users not upgrading. It's about upgrading being impossible due to means beyond a consumer's control.

This isn't a problem. The update situation on android needs to be fix, but it is not a problem and has never been. People are still buying them.

This is a problem. If I'm a software developer and I want to target API enhancements that have been added to Android in the past 2 YEARS, but that would mean cutting off 75% of my potential target users, what kind of choice is that?

That's the reason the Android software situation sucks. Lowest common denominator; it's like having to write Windows software that still supports Windows XP (actually it's worse, because Microsoft has continually updated the .NET SDK to add new functionality to XP).

Contrasted with iOS where > 60% of iPhone users are ALREADY on iOS 6 after < 2 weeks, where it's very easy for developers to set a minimum OS version of iOS 5 and drastically cut/refactor their code base as the platform continues to improve.

I would gladly use the latest android, if verizon would let me have it. I used to have my phone rooted so I could update to the most recent android versions, then verizon slipped in some "update" after a factory reset and I can no longer root my phone or install the latest anything.

I've been an Android user since 2010 and recently upgraded my iPhone4S from work to the Galaxy S3 (VZW), which shipped with ICS (4.0.4). I was so disgusted with the green fonts and UI from TouchWiz and the overall lackluster perfprmance of ICS that I unlocked the bootloader and rooted the S3 for my very first time.

Now running Cyanogenmod 10 (Jelly Bean 4.1) and couldn't be happier. Why manufacturers and carriers have to slap all their bullshit on the stock Android experience, I'll never understand. The premium Android phones should all ship stock Android, latest release.

If Samsung can make you comfortable with TouchWiz, then suddenly HTC's Sense UI and Google's stock UI and whatever Motorola puts on their phones becomes foreign and scary and you are much less likely to switch away to another manufacturer.

I would like to echo comments from an earlier poster .. I'm so sick of journalists using the project code names instead of version numbers ... I'm sick of it with Android as much as I'm sick of it with MacOS. Articles such as this one (and virtually every other article written about the Android OS) would be much improved if the writer would take a few minutes to simply point out the version numbers or release dates or SOMETHING that indicates some sort of logical release sequence for the operating systems. I know that tech journalists and bloggers do this to increase their "street cred", but it's really annoying.

I just upgraded from Froyo to ICS a month ago (by buying a new phone). I must say, going to ICS is awesome. The settings are much easier to go through, seeing data usage is useful, the task manager being so accessible and telling me current CPU usage helps me catch junk apps. And the ability to freeze the apps I can't remove is fantastic. One of my carrier's apps appeared to be draining my battery, despite having never manually opened it.

The reason I was still on Froyo was that might device was never going to support anything more. It was built with a tiny amount of internal memory and there was no way you were getting gingerbread and the carriers junk apps on there.

I'm excited for a Jelly Bean upgrade, but I really doubt it will be as exciting as ICS was. ICS is the first Android OS I consider to be good enough. You actually have the tools you need to manage your device.